Live from SEJ Conference: GE and the Hudson River

Oct 1, 2009

When I walked into GE's water treatment plant in Hudson Falls, N.Y., past enormous 10,000 gallon tanks labeled "sludge conditioning," "backwater holding" and "effluent," I was still groggy from four hours of sleep and a three-hour bus ride. But as I took my seat under a big green sign printed in friendly cursive letters "Safety First," I wasn't too tired to appreciate the irony.

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It was the first day of the Society for Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference in Burlington, Vermont, and we were here to see firsthand what the company is doing to remove the PCBs that, for 30 years, it had discharged into the Hudson River. The persistent organic pollutant, used as an insulating fluid in the manufacture of capacitors until 1977, is in fact still seeping into the river from under the defunct Ft. Edward and Hudson Falls plants. GE was ordered to stem the tide, and has since removed 160 tons of PCBs from bedrock and sediment.

Yet this cavernous facility is only a tenth of the size as the one that GE needs to finish the job (though "finish" in this sense means removing, from the hottest spots in a 40-mile stretch of river, just a percentage of the 1.3 million total pounds of PCBs). The pollutant has been found in the top two inches of sediment in 80% of 50,000 samples, confirming that, even decades later, it is not being buried. The plan—now awaiting final approval from a federal judge—is to dredge the river with mechanical clam shell-style machines (up to eight at one time), load the sediment on to barges, ship it to a processing facility, load it onto railcars and transport it to a landfill. For six years.

But before any of that can begin, GE must first construct a dewatering facility to remove water from the PCB-laden sediment (ultimately, enough to fill Yankee Stadium twice), a rail yard with five miles of track, a support marina and a wharf. This processing site would need an access road, seven acres of stormwater basins and utilities such as electricity (5-7 megawatts worth), sewer and a water treatment plant the same size as the county's. "When you look at this, we are constructing the infrastructure of a small city," says GE's John Haggard, his eyes lighting up like those of a boy with a fresh box of Legos.

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The company is clearly not too excited about facing future engineering challenges, however. Five years ago it sued the federal government, claiming the EPA's authority to force environmental clean-ups is unconstitutional. Though it may forge ahead with the Hudson River project, if GE wins the suit it could very well mean the end of the Superfund Act. Every time the EPA tries to enforce the act, a company could take it to court—far less costly than a $500 million remediation such as the Hudson. To put things in perspective, there are currently 150 Superfund sites with contaminated sediments; GE is involved in 87 sites.

David Carpenter, a professor of Environmental Health and Toxicology at the University of Albany, told me that besides causing cancer, suppressing immunity and disrupting the endocrine system—and, recent data show, contributing to heart disease and diabetes—PCBs cause the same irreversible loss of five to seven IQ points in relation to mother's breast milk as lead. He believes lower IQ is "the single most serious health effect of PCBs, because it's just dumbing down the population." Which begs the question: If there's no Superfund Act, would the next generation even be able to create such a massive feat of engineering? —Jennifer Bogo

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